Plunging into apologies for every conceivable thing that could or might be amiss, Don Anastasio’s steward led them into the sala, a long front room, the hacendado’s hall of state. To all appearances it had not been so used in many years, but the old furnishing of some former Spanish owner still told the tale of coaches before the colonnade outside and of hidalgo guests within the great house. There was the stately sofa of honor flanked by throne-like armchairs, with high-backed ones next in line, all once of bright crimson satin and now frazzled and stained. The inevitable mirror leaned from its inevitable place over the sofa, but it was cracked and the gilt of the heavy frame had tarnished to red. At the other end of the sala, a considerable journey, there hung a token of the later and Mexican family in possession. The token was of course the Virgin of Guadelupe in her flame of gold, as she had gaudily emblazoned herself on the blanket, or serape, of a poor Indian. Murguía’s print was one of thousands of copies of that same revered serape.

Urging them to be seated, clapping his hands for servants, giving orders, ever apologizing, the overseer finally got the travelers convinced that it was their house and that supper would be ready now directly. With a glance at his two companions, Driscoll inquired for the señoras of the family, whereupon a sudden embarrassment darkened the administrador’s fat amiable features.

“Doña Luz, Your Mercy means? Ai, caballero, you are most kind. And you tell me that her father will come to-morrow, that he will–surely come?”

“Might we,” Jacqueline interposed, “pay our respects to Señor Murguía’s daughter?”

Next morning Driscoll was astir early. He wandered through a thick-walled labyrinth of corridors and patios, and came at last into a rankly luxuriant tropical garden, where the soft perfume of china-tree blossoms filled his nostrils. Keeping on he passed many of the hacienda buildings, a sugar mill, a cotton factory, warehouses, stables with corrals, and entered a tortuous street between adobes, where he found the hacienda store. Here the administrador was watching the clerks who sold and the peons who bought. The latter were mostly women, barefooted and scantily clothed. Their main want was corn, weevil-eaten corn, which they carried away in their aprons. They made tortillas of it for their men laboring in the hacienda fields, or on the hacienda coffee hills. The store was a curious epitome of thrift and improvidence. One wench grumbled boldly of short measure. She dared, because she was comely and buxom, and her chemise fell low on her full, olive breast. She counted her purchase of frijoles to the last grain, using her fingers, and glaring at the clerk half coaxingly, half resentfully. But an intensely scarlet percale caught her barbarian eye, and she took enough of it for a skirt. A dozen cigarettes followed, and by so much she increased her man’s debt to the hacienda.

“But, mi patron, there’s my nephew.”

“True, and he has his own father’s debt waiting for him.”

“Just a wee little,” begged the man.

The overseer shook his head. “When you’ve worked to-day, yes. Then you may have six cents’ worth, and the other six cents of the day’s wages counted off your debt. There now, get along with you to the timber cutting.”

The administrador brightened on perceiving Driscoll. “How was His Mercy? How had His Mercy passed the night? How––”

“Where,” interposed Driscoll, “might one find the nearest stage to Mexico?”

Almost nowhere, was the reply. What with the French intervention and guerrillas, the Compañia de Diligencias had about suspended its service altogether. “Then,” said Driscoll, “could we hire some sort of a rig from you?” The administrador believed so, though he regretted continuously that Their Mercies must be leaving so soon.

With a nod of thanks Driscoll turned curiously to the loaded shelves, and gazed at the bolts of manta, calico, and red flannel. “Jiminy crickets,” he burst forth, “is there anybody on this ranch who can sew?”

Yes, the wife of one of the clerks was a passable seamstress. She did such work for the Doñas at the House.

Most certainly.

Then Driscoll invested in a number of varas of calico print. It was the best available. But the light blue flowering was modest enough, and there was even a cheery freshness about it that called up mellowing recollections of bright-eyed Missouri girls. Yet each time he thought of the costumes he had ordered, he blushed until his hair roots tingled.

Intent once more on departure, Din Driscoll hastened back to the House. But he only learned that Jacqueline and Berthe were not up yet. He mumbled at such looseness in discipline, until he remembered that they were not troopers, but girls. And since girls are to be waited for, he did it in his own room. From his saddlebags he laid out shaving material. The Old Brigade had advised these things, while speculating with dry concern on what was correct among emperors. After much sharp snapping of eyes, for the razor pulled, the clean line of his jaw emerged from lather and stubble. “Just in case any emperor should happen in,” he tried to explain it, taking a transparently jocose manner with himself.

Eight o’clock! Even civilized people do not stay abed that late! Yet he found only Berthe in the dining room. She had come on a foraging expedition. He watched the little Bretonne’s deft arranging of a battered tray, and offered droll suggestions until she began to suspect that he really did not mean them. Berthe was a nice girl with soft brown hair, and a serious, gentle way about her.

“Madame is served,” Berthe announced.

Madame raised herself on an elbow and looked at the tray, at the sorry chinaware, at the earthen supplements. “Served?” she repeated. “Berthe, exaggeration is a very bad habit. But child, what are you about? This is not a petit déjeuner!”

“I know, madame, but he told me to bring it. He said we’d be traveling, and there wouldn’t be time for a second breakfast.”

“He? Who in the world––”

“Why, the, the American monsieur. He said just coffee wasn’t enough, and for me to bring along the entire contest of marksmanship–the, the whole shooting match–and for madame to hurry.”

“Berthe! one would say you thought him a prince.”

“He–he is a kind of prince,” said the little Bretonne doggedly.

Madame whistled softly. Still, she ate a hearty breakfast.

Meantime, outside two resplendent horsemen were galloping up the curving sweep of the wide road. Their haste smacked of vast importance, and the very dazzling flash of their brass helmets in the sunlight had a certain arrogance. The foremost jerked his horse’s bit with a cruel petulance and drew up before the hacienda house. Several natives were basking on the steps, and he cut at them sharply with his whip.

“Wake, you r-rats!” A Teutonic thickness of speech clogged his utterance, and he turned to his companion. “Tell this canaille,” he snarled in Flemish, “to go fetch their master here at once.”

“Your Mercy is–is the Emperor?” stammered the poor fat administrador.

He had, indeed, heard rumors of Maximilian on one of his ostentatious voyages. The first Belgian, however, was in no way embarrassed at the question. It was a natural mistake, in his opinion.

“Explain to this imbecile,” he ordered, “since there’s no better here to receive us.”

The aide explained. His Imperial Majesty, Maximiliano, was returning to his capital. Fascinated by the beauty of the tropics, as well as ill of a cough, he had lingered for a week past at the adjoining hacienda of Las Palmas. He had also been deep in studies for the welfare of his people. But now the business of the Empire demanded that he relieve the Empress of her regency. Accordingly, His Majesty and His Majesty’s retinue had left Las Palmas that very morning, and would shortly pass by the hacienda of Moctezuma. His Majesty, when en voyage, always took a loving interest in his subjects, and a sincere ovation never failed to touch his heart. So Monsieur Éloin–here the aide glanced with some irony at the first Belgian–so Monsieur Éloin thought that the master of La Moctezuma would be grateful to know of His Majesty’s approach, in order to gather the peons from the fields to welcome him. It would be as well, perhaps, to reveal nothing to the Emperor of this thoughtful hint.

“And tell him,” interrupted Monsieur Éloin, “not to forget the green boughs waving in their hands. Make him understand that there will be consequences if it’s not spontaneous.”

As they galloped back to rejoin Maximilian, the imperial aide was thoughtful. “I can’t help it,” he said aloud, “I feel sorry for him. How his blue eyes glisten–there are actually tears in them–when he talks to these Indians of freedom and a higher life! He thinks they love him! And all this elegance–no wonder they believe that the Fair God is come at last to right their sorrows.”

“The loathsome beasts!”

“But I do feel sorry. He really believes that he will verify the tradition and be their savior. It’s his sincere goodness of heart. Man, how exalted he is!”

“But where’s the harm?”

“Because, because the poor devils were fooled once before. And their new Messiah may deceive them as bitterly with unwise meddling as Cortez did with greed and cruelty.”

“Messiah for these pigs!” Éloin sneered. “What pleasure it gives him, I can’t see.”

The Emperor was coming–elaborately, by august degrees.

First, and far in advance, arrived a haughty pack liveried in the royal green of ancient Aztec dynasties. New tenants might have been moving on this bright May day, for the flunkies attended a small caravan of household stuff, which they crammed through the gaping doorway as nuts into a goose’s maw. The stuff was all royal, of royalty’s absolute necessities. There were soft rugs, and finely spun tapestries, and portiéres to smother a whisper. There was a high-backed chair, and a velvet-covered dais for the high-backed chair. There were brushes, whose stroke caressed gently and purringly the Hapsburg whisker. There was a Roman poet, fastidiously bound, and then–there was the Ritual.

The Ritual was a massive tome, of glazed, gilt-edged paper, of print as big for the proclaiming of truth as the Family Bible, of weight to burden a strong man, of contents to stagger a giant brain, unless the giant brain had in it the convolution of a smile. Maximilian and Charlotte had reigned a year, and so far the Ritual was the supreme monument to the glory and usefulness of their Empire. It decreed, by Imperial dictation and signature, the etiquette that must and should be observed in the courtly circle. But alas, you can’t codify genuflections, nor yet a handshake.

Several hundred peons stared with open mouths. Gathered before the house, they prattled to one another in childlike expectancy of the Señor Emperador. Most of them were learning for the first time that they had an emperor. Still, it sufficed to know this was an occasion for auto-inspiring vivas, like once when the Ilustrísimo Bishop came. They took new hold on the green boughs they were to wave. A handkerchief here and there fluttered from a bamboo pole. Down in an adobe village by the river junction, every gala scrap of calico print, whether shirt or skirt, pended from cords stretched across the street; and cotton curtains, some of crude drawn work, hung outside the windows. All the poor finery of the Indians was on exhibition to do honor to a gorgeous Old World court. But the fiesta air had already gotten into the susceptible native lungs, and that alone, with only a trumpet’s blare, would make for a hurrah in genuine fervor.

The roomy porch of the old mansion was crowded with the chief people of the hacienda, clerks, foremen, house servants, besides the administrador and the chaplain. Behind a remote column were the three wanderers in the wilderness; the Storm Centre, the Marchioness, and the Maid. They were to have been gone by now, and yet it was not the coming of the emperor that had stopped them. The cause was nearer at hand. Smoking a long black cigar, “grizzled and fierce, as ornate in braid and decorations as a bullfighter,” Colonel Dupin had delayed them.

They surrounded the Missourian on the hacienda portico. If only for his debonnaire indifference, they knew him for a “bad man” such as none of them might ever hope to be. And they watched him like lynxes, though he was unarmed. Yet he did not look “bad.” He merely looked bored. He was a prisoner, but not the only one. Anastasio Murguía fidgetted among the Cossacks on his own porch. His restless eyes roved incessantly over the crowd, seeking his daughter, but they were steadily baffled.

Down in the valley, where the Rio Moctezuma joined its course with the Pánuco, a dusty mist moved nearer along the old Spanish highway, and faintly there came the sound of clarions. An eager murmuring arose from the throng on the hillside. It swelled more confidently to a buzz as the far-away dust lifted at the ford and revealed the beaded stringing of a numerous company. The distant bugles rang clearer on the pure air. “Yes, he comes,” the people cried, “There! Seest thou, hombre?–There! Viva el Señor Emperador!”

For Colonel Dupin the cloud of dust would shortly evolve into a staying hand of mercy, into the exasperating stupidity of mercy. He had captured the American not ten minutes before, and here was interference in a gauzy haze of dust. He signed to one of his men to follow with Murguía, and he himself placed a gauntleted hand on Driscoll’s shoulder. “Now,” he said.

“Monsieur Dupin,” she cried, “have I not already permitted myself to tell you–yes, I repeat, you are mistaken. He is in no sense whatever an accomplice of Rodrigo Galán.”

The Tiger heard, no doubt, but he did not stop. He kept on toward the door, Driscoll beside him, and his men around him. He meant to pass through the house. Some secluded corral in the back would do for the execution. Driscoll seemed as indifferent as ever, though there was a lithe, alert spring in his step. Behind him Murguía was moaning, praying to see his daughter. Berthe followed, bewildered, and silently wringing her hands. But the death march was so business-like, and every one else was so intent on the approach of a royally born person, that the crowds shoved aside by the little group never once suspected that they had just brushed elbows with tragedy in the making.

Jacqueline caught her breath, sucked it in rather, in a pang of angry despair; and plucking up her skirts she ran ahead until she could oppose her slender figure squarely in front of the burly Frenchman. If he were to move on, he must trample her down. Her eyes, usually so big and round and shading to a depth of blue with their lively mischief, were all but closed, and through the narrowed lashes they gleamed like white steel. Her voice, though, was clear and even, of a studied courtesy.

“But the jostling by a woman’s tongue, mademoiselle.–Well, what is it? Have mercy, be brief, since I am not even to breathe while my lady talks.”

“I was thinking, dear monsieur, of the feelings of an artist, to which you are very, very blind.”

“Feelings, artist? Name of a name, mademoiselle!”

“Precisely, Maximilian’s feelings. You know how he abhors the sight of blood. Ma foi, and I agree with him.”

“Go it, Miss Jack-leen!” Driscoll abetted her. Never a word of their French did he understand, but he knew that she had a power of speech. Dupin evidently knew it better yet, for though he laughed, he did not laugh easily.

“Never fear,” he said, “His Majesty’s delicate prejudices are safe. It will be all underground before he comes, and no muss at all.”

“But you forget,” Jacqueline cried testily, “you forget the imagination of a poet.”

“And he will imagine––”

“Yes, because I shall tell him.”

“Sacré––”

“And possibly he would brace his feelings to a second æsthetic horror as a rebuke for the first. In a word, my colonel, there will be one more body to follow–underground. Now is this quite clear, or–do you require my promise on it?”

The savage old brow manifested the desire to make her a victim as well, but in this extra blood-thirst she knew that Driscoll was safe. “I understand, Mademoiselle la Marquise,” he said, laying on heavily the suave gallantry of a Frenchman. “Yes, I understand. Prince Max values Your Ladyship’s good taste so highly–– Pardi, I believe he would certainly shoot me if you told him to.”

“Exactly,” Jacqueline coldly assented.

“As Monsieur le Tigre may congratulate himself that the American does not understand this insult, sir.”

Behind her rose a dry hysterical cackle of renewed hope. “The Little Black Crow!” she exclaimed. “See, my colonel, he is not worth an execution all to himself, so do we all go back to contemplate Prince Max’s loving ovation.”

“The Emperor arrives!” she cried gayly, returning to the porch. With the others she was once more behind the remote column, an end of the rebosa hanging over her arm ready to be flung across her face. “But what–Hélas, I haven’t my Ritual with me.”–The Ritual classified every movement, every breath of the Court, as rigidly and with as little consciousness of humor as Linnæus did his flowers.–“It can’t be a Minor Palace Luncheon of the Third Class,” she mused, “and it isn’t Grand Court Mourning of the First Degree. Ha, I have it, He–that ‘H’ is a capital, please, not as a sacrilege, but to be Ritualistic–He is out on a voyage of the Minor Class, Small Service of Honor, Lesser Cortège. Now then, all’s comfortable; no room for plebeian misconceptions.”

On they came, each rigidly after his kind, a Noah’s procession of Dignitaries with the August Sovereign first of all. To bring on the majestic climax so early was illogical, of course, but dust having happened to be created before precedence, the Cortège was changed the other way round for a voyage, so that the First Category people breathed what the August Sovereign kicked up and kicked up some additional for the Second Category, and the Second did the same for the Third, and so on down to the Ninth, or “And all others,” who breathed the best they could and paid the bill.

“Belgians too!” exclaimed Jacqueline. “And the Mexican emigrés! They came back when we made it safe for them. But where, oh where, are the French?”

“Everywhere,” growled the Tiger, “in mountains and swamps, dying everywhere, fighting for this Austrian archduke. But he doesn’t like to be seen with them.”

Behind eight white mules of Spain, four abreast, rolled the coach of the Emperor, solitary and marked as majesty itself. There were postilions and outriders and footmen arrayed in the Imperial livery with the Imperial crown. And on the coach door flashed Maximilian’s escutcheon, his archducal arms grafted on the torso of his new imperial estate. There were the winged griffins with absurd scrolls for tails. They had voracious claws, had these droll beasts of prey, and they clutched at an oval frame ruthlessly, as though to shatter it and get at a certain bird within. Poor bird, his shelter looked very fragile, and he about to be smothered under an enormous diadem as under an extinguisher. He was none other than the Mexican eagle perched on his own native cactus, and he desired only peace and quiet while he throttled the snake of ignorance in his talons, which snake had been his worry ever since the Aztec hordes from the north had first caged him in. Beneath the Imperial arms was the motto, “Equidad en la Justicia,” but it seemed an idle promise.

The Cortège followed in carriages one hundred paces apart. The first held the First Grand Dignitary, the only Dignitary of Third Category rank, and hence the only one who could stand near the throne after Highnesses, Grand Collars, and Ambassadors. He was the Grand Marshal of the Court and Minister of the Imperial Household. His privileges consisted of seeing “His Majesty when called for,” and of “communicating with Him in writing.” But he could not see Him when not called for. In reality the Grand Marshal was a quiet old Mexican gentleman who seemed ill at ease. He was General Almonte, one of those conservatives who had sought their country’s tranquillity in foreign intervention. But Maximilian had bespangled him into a Dignidad, and thus lost to himself an able politician’s usefulness. The real man of affairs was an obscure Belgian who openly and insolently despised everything Mexican. He also sang chansonettes. He was the sour-browed Monsieur Éloin already mentioned.

The Sixth Grand Dignitary of Cabellerizo Mayor helped His Majesty to descend from His coach. He did it mid vociferous cheering and waving of boughs and agitation of handkerchiefs on bamboo poles. Aides and Deputy Dignitaries worked industriously driving back the simple Inditos.

“‘The General Aide de Camp,’” Jacqueline quoted reverently, “‘will keep the people from the Imperial coach, but without maiming them.’”

The flame of lofty resolve burned with a high, present heat in Maximilian’s dreamy eyes. But the thing was not statesmanship. The danger dial pointed to some latest darling phantasy.

When the young prince–he was but thirty-three–descended from his carriage, he signed that the Cortège should not form as yet. And instead of mounting the colonnade steps, he turned and mingled with his humble subjects. A pleased murmur arose among the Indians. “Que simpático!” they breathed in little gasps of admiring awe.

The unusually tall and very fair young man, in the simplicity of black, with only the grand cross of St. Stephen about his neck, moved about among the ragged peons. Now and again he spoke to one and another, questioning earnestly. Anxious orderlies were quick to brush aside the touch of an elbow, but to those outside the circle, watching what he would do, he seemed alone with his people. And in thought, he really was. There was a great pity upon his face, and it was the more poignant because these timorous children could not comprehend the wretchedness which so appealed to him.

“And thou?” he demanded of an aged man whose tatters hung heavy in filth.

“Animal,” snarled Éloin in his ear, “can’t you say ‘Your Majesty’?”

“Your–Majesty, or if I had children, I could make my debt–oh, grande, grande, twenty reales, maybe. And then, and then I should have a red and purple scrape, with a green eagle, like my nephew Felipe has.–He owes,” the man added in a kind of pride, “thirty reales, my nephew Felipe does.”

But his wiles failed. The rich señor turned toward the colonnade, his sailor’s easy swing giving way to a tread of determination. Also, the pure flame burned consumingly.

From the top of the steps, between files of dismounted Dragoons, Maximilian looked over the people, beyond, in some far away gaze of the spirit.

Jacqueline hid the golden gleam of her hair under the rebosa. “Silencium!” she whispered, laying a finger across her lips. “For now we’ll have the mountains to frisk, and the little hills to skip. In all the Orient there blooms no flower of eloquence like unto his.”

The monarch’s inspired look promised as much. “Mexicans,” he began. The peons huddled closer, their responsive natures quickened. His sonorous voice was electrical, despite an accent, despite the German over-gush of stammering when words could not keep pace with the vast idea. But the one word of address gave the peons a dignity they had never suspected.

“Mexicans: you have desired me. Acceding to the spontaneous expression of your wishes, I have come to your noble country–our dear patria–to watch over and direct your destinies. And with me came one who feels for you all the tenderness of a mother, who is your Empress and my August Spouse.”

Proceeding, the speaker solemnly told them of his divine right as a Hapsburg, as one of the Cæsars, and of his anointment by the Vicar of God at Rome, so that to God alone was he responsible. As a Mexican he gloried with them in their liberties, in the True Liberty he brought, for had not the Holy Father said to him, “Great are the rights of a people, but greater and more sacred are the rights of the Church?” Hence he burned with Heaven-given fire to lift them, his subjects, into the vanguard of Nineteenth Century Progress.

Here Maximilian paused mid cheers, and thinking on his next words, his delicate hand of a gentleman clenched.

“Mexicans,” he began again, now in the vibrant tone of an overpowering emotion. “I pray to fulfil the mission for which God has placed me here. There are six millions of you, a sober and industrious race. Cortez found you so, and you astounded him with your civilization. But the conditions that followed have enslaved you. Enslaved, I repeat, for you are bound by debt. Your hacendado master contrives that you cannot pay even his usurious interest. The food you eat, you must buy from him, at his prices, of the quality he prescribes. And if your debt be not sufficient, that is, if there seems a chance of your paying it off, then you must increase it to obtain your daily bread. Your very children are slaves at birth, since with their first birth they inherit your chains. And if you or your children run away, you or they may be brought back as runaway slaves. It is thus that I find you, Mexicans. And I find you awaiting a liberator, waiting vainly through the centuries. But now, at last, the reward of your suffering and your faith has come. In a word, which shall be formally recorded in the Journal Official, We this day decree––”

“I knew it,” exclaimed Jacqueline, “he always coins his inspirations.”

“Yet with not,” said Jacqueline, “a foot of land to be free on. But you know, messieurs, that Utopia is an asylum for the blind.”

“It’s a spider on his ceiling,” muttered Colonel Dupin, touching his own head significantly.

The emancipator’s face was beatific. He heard the peons acclaim him, as gradually they began to understand that there was to be no more unhappiness. But it was curious how far, far away the sweet music sounded, even when some belated “Viva el Señor Emperador!” cracked in ludicrous falsetto. For the poet-prince these human chords might have been the strings of a harp, softly touched. And as far away as posterity.

Jacqueline fell to clapping her hands noiselessly. “Oh, lá-lá,” she cried, “if we are not to have an epic flight from Monsieur Éloin!”

It was true in a degree. Five minutes of stupendous history making had just elapsed, and some graceful tribute was due. The royal favorite had foreseen the need, and he was prepared; but whether by borrowing or originating, it is impossible to say.

“Parbleu, why not?” demanded Jacqueline. “If only he were as great as his decrees, poor man!”

Maximilian by this time remembered that he must be somebody’s guest. “Who receives Us here?” he asked. But none of his court knew. Even Monsieur Éloin could only point to the administrador. “Why is your master not present?” inquired General Almonte. The administrador opened his mouth, and it stayed open. Colonel Dupin had promised to shoot him if he breathed a word of Don Anastasio being a prisoner.

Maximilian looked the weazened old man over in disappointment. Here, then, was the lord of Moctezuma, an hacendado, and hence one of the heavy timbers for his empire building. Don Anastasio scraped awkwardly and craved many pardons for not being on hand to welcome His Majesty. Overcoming a curious aversion to the man, the emperor straightway invested him with the newly created order of Civil Merit, and Don Anastasio, without a peon to till his fields or to oil his machinery, quaked under the honor of a copper medal.

“And,” pursued the monarch, “We find a need of stout officials, for We have been grieved to learn of hacendados who secretly aid the prowling rebellious outlaws that infest our country.–And as We must have a prefect in this district of an integrity like your own, it pleases Us, dear caballero, to name you jefe político.”

The new jefe’s greenish eyes contracted in terror. He thought of the brigands whom magistrates were supposed to discourage, and he tried to frame excuses.

“Accept, you fool,” someone whispered. “Mexicans can’t refuse office–that’s decreed.” It was Don Tiburcio, his sombrero against his breast. To Murguía the Roman sword on the crown seemed more than ever emblematic of “Woe to the conquered.” In a veritable panic he accepted.

The little church of the hacienda stood on a barren knoll, mid chaparral and graves. The curate’s white adobe adjoining was the only near habitation. A stone walk as wide as the church itself approached for a hundred yards, sloping up from a pasture below. The one tower opened on four sides for the better ease of the bell ringers. Its bright mosaic peak rose peaceful and still in the clear air.

And such a feast as the unconscious Hapsburg afforded the ghoul of a priest! It was a loathsome surgery; greedy fingers trembling on the knife, the victim’s soul flayed, each nerve of a vanity, or tendon of an ambition, or full-throbbing vein of hope, each and all lifted one by one from the clotted mass and scrutinized exultantly. There was not a feature but held a revelation as sure as vivisection. The high, broad forehead of a gentle poet was often shaded by a dreamy melancholy, but never once did it furrow in either craft or cruelty. In that the priest knew his man for a devout mystic, knew him for a child confidingly looking to a Destiny to inspire his every footstep. Then there was the beard. It was too great a wealth of whisker, its satin, glossy flow of too dandified a precision. The delicate finger tips stroked it softly, affectionately, to the left; then softly, affectionately to the right; and always dreamily. But the most shameless traitor of all was the lower lip. It was the Hapsburg lower lip, heavy and thick and sensuous, and ill-fated. Hanging partly open under the silken drooping moustache, it revealed the spoiled child of royalty, who mistakes obstinacy for decision, and changes whims with despotic petulance. Maximilian believed in his star. But a lower lip is more potent than predestination. He need only have leaned close to his mirror. Then he might have seen what the priest saw so clearly.

Maximilian paused on coming out. The freedmen were just rising from their knees among the thorns and stones. Then it occurred to the liberator that their participation in the rejoicing was not exactly, ah–conspicuous. “Would you not think it well, father,” said he to the Grand Chaplain, “that these poor people partake of the holy communion on this day that has been so eventful for them? If you approve, let it be ordered that––”

Maximilian turned quickly, a pleased smile on his lips. The interruption came in his own tongue, in German. And he who had spoken was a German. It was the hacienda curate. His voice was soft, and purring with deference. He wished to say, with permission, that the holy sacrament for the Inditos was out of the question; scarcely one of them had been baptized.

“Not baptized!” Maximilian exclaimed. “And this, is this fulfilling your sacred obligations?”

The curate bowed his head. He had found them thus, when he first came, a few weeks ago.

“And you came––”

“From Durango, sire, where as secretary I served His Señoría Ilustrísimo, the Bishop of the state.” But, as he meekly explained, he had sought the Lord’s service among the Huastecans. Pastors were said to be needed, yet never had he imagined––He stopped short, in naïve embarrassment.

Maximilian appreciated his delicacy in not wishing to reflect on the Huasteca bishop. But from others he learned that neither baptism nor other spiritual office had been performed in the community for years and years, and that the bishop resided in the capitol, because among his flock he had neither comforts nor a befitting state.

“But why,” Maximilian demanded sternly, “have you not put to use the few weeks you have been here?”

The curate’s small eyes leaped to adventure. But he lowered them hastily, and folded his hands over his rounded soutane. He had heard that His Majesty might come, he said, and he had presumed so far as to hope that His Majesty might deign to act as godfather for the poor Indians, and so he had waited.

“––Before God, who will bless Your Majesty,” murmured the priest.

And to be brief, let it be recorded that they were baptized by the hundred, with hurried pomp–“pompes à incendie,” as the godfather himself described it.